The heart of a computer is a magnetic disk drive which typically includes a rotating magnetic disk, a slider that has read and write heads, a suspension arm above the rotating disk and an actuator arm that swings the suspension arm to place the read and/or write heads over selected circular tracks on the rotating disk. The suspension arm biases the slider into contact with the surface of the disk when the disk is not rotating but, when the disk rotates, air is swirled by the rotating disk adjacent an air bearing surface (ABS) of the slider causing the slider to ride on an air bearing a slight distance from the surface of the rotating disk. When the slider rides on the air bearing the write and read heads are employed for writing magnetic impressions to and reading magnetic signal fields from the rotating disk. The read and write heads are connected to processing circuitry that operates according to a computer program to implement the writing and reading functions.
Conventional magnetic heads have become smaller and smaller, requiring more elements to be placed in smaller areas. The physical parameter reductions that are required for these conventional heads (i.e., narrower pole width, thinner write pole, shorter write shield throat height, narrower gap widths between the write pole and the write shield, etc.) may cause a substantial drop in the write field strength as compared with write heads from a generation ago, which had lower areal density. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a magnetic head design that can accommodate all the elements in the smaller space requirements, without the substantial loss of write field strength.